Given that singing is the art of subjective muscular sensation, combined with the fact that the greatest singers seldom are the greatest teachers, it’s not strange that singers seem to contradict each other when describing their technique.
I love it; it genuinely reminds me of absolutely stacked gym bros who clearly don't actually know the first thing about exercise science and contradict each other left and right. Delicious.
Battistini: "I never breathe in more air than I need to smell a rose." Also Battistini: sings half of the aria in full voice and on one breath They must've got some pretty big roses in Contigliano
Such a gorgeous plethora of fantastical thought with no inexorable relation with scientific reality. Singers are singularly peculiar creatures, in this case reminiscent in their ways of explaining the craft to old grannies explaining the thought process behind the methods used when cooking their signature dishes: "Brown the roast before braising, so it won't loose it's juices"; "Add a pinch of ash to your caramel so it remains creamy"; "always put the bay leaf before the salt". The rationale may be flawed, but the food and the singing both happen to be exquisite. That is, in my humblest of opinions, part of the beauty of this grand mistery that is Opera.
"Make it blossom like a tree in Spring" said a teacher of a friend of mine. My friend asked "what kind of tree?" The teacher responded impatiently "I don't know. Just pick one!"🤣
Wow, wonderful video! "When a note is perfect, it should lie and vibrate like a metal ball on top of the jet of water in a fountain."That was - according to Jussi Björling - what his very musically gifted dad (who himself was an opera singer) taught his 3 sons. It is really interesting that so many different views are presented. Birgit Nilsson and Jussi Björling had the same voice teacher, the famous tenor Joseph Hislop. Jussi thought that Hislop helped him much, while Birgit thought he was awful and almost ruined her voice,
There is no ONE technique that works for everyone. For me, I take bits and pieces of tech advice. If it works for me, I keep it, if not, I don't use it.
The position of the sensation of a correctly produced note depends on the vowel and pitch; this position is an effect and is not caused by trying to squirt the voice anywhere. On low notes with certain vowels there is a slight forward feel, but this moves further back with ascent in pitch. High notes have a feeling of height and back. All this is basically "Old School" teaching as is careful vowel modification.
@@ian1856 I disagree. The natural voice modifies the vowel subconsciously, but natural technique is usually beaten out of singers by modern conservatoire teaching. The non-natural singer has to learn to progressively colour a vowel with ascent in pitch besides letting the lips move into the "Ah" position. For examples, the vowel "A" is gradually tinted or tinged with "O" though the middle register (with gradual relaxing of the lips) and given a touch of "U" on high notes. This way means there is no passaggio which bedevils so many modern singers.
6:54 if we take Carreras word for true, looking at his performances from the mid 1980s on, he wasn't getting much sex. Either that, or he claimed this before he went through leukaemia, and it really strained his voice and no matter how much sex he got, he couldn't sing as well as he did before.
It’s a shame to see what he let the industry do to him. It’s very hard to find a better Duke or Edgardo than young Carreras. Unfortunately, he will mainly be remembered for his performances of Cavaradossi, don Jose and Radames that he shouted his way through
Maybe he wasn't having enough sex because he had leukaemia? OK I am kidding... His decline began way before he had leukaemia. He is a good lyric tenor with a soothing voice. I find his renditions of Nemorino, Duke of Mantua, Alfredo, etc are very impressive. But he was singing dramatic repertoires, which ruined his voice. The illness certainly didn't help. He basically didn't sing many staged operas after his recovery and focused on art songs.
The problem with great singers is that they approach teaching from their own perspective. They often think and focus on problems or areas where they experienced difficulties. Of course every singer has their own difficulties that they need to overcome. It could also lead to some other problems the teacher might think a singer is more advanced than they really are, if they can easily overcome something the teacher really struggled with, but of course it might just mean that the student has difficulties in another area. The student might be advanced through the process too quickly. A great vocal coach should be able to deal with any potential problem that might arrive. But the best bet as a student is probably to try and find a teacher that had similar issues to your own.
A wise student of singing should decide for himself what is important as far as having his own voice obey him and the requirements of the music. The music dictates what must be achieved. How you arrive at that takes a lot of soul searching, trial and error and the input of singers who you believe achieved their goals. There are certain qualities of a great voice that are universal. What are they? Beauty, power, vocal range, staying power, and a sense of emotional connection to the text. We have to understand that EVERY NOTE we sing is the result of our creating our physical instrument and sustaining it from note to note...phrase to phrase. Our vocal instrument is human...physical...and able to change in an instant from a glorious thrilling instrument to our everyday ordinary speaking voice. We must be able to consciously identify what is necessary to maintain our instrument in its instrumental posture so that our voice flows out in a beautiful consistent manner. That is the challenge.
It comes back to the issue that you can't see what your muscles are actually doing while singing, so yo resort to describing the sensations and that's not always accurate to what is actually happening physically.
I never heard him live. Not sure what to think of his stunt as the "Ukrainian Batman", but he sure has a quality voice. A very nice, unique color and, apparently, quite resonant.
@@AfroPoli yeah i was think the same thing about that britains got talent thing, probably just having fun. Im looking forward to hearing him live one day
@@pipogalli in an interview with Stephan Sucker he says verbatiam "la voce non va in maschera", the voice doesnt go into the mask as it closes the throat. I mean from a scientific point the throat cannot be closed or open, or put in the mask. But i think mask singing is specially misleading as it is just overbrightening with no real projection.
So: keep the tone forward in the mask but also back . Sing brightly but also dark. Release the muscles , but never release the muscles. You must have powerful lungs, but you only need a small amount of air. Placement and vocalises are worthless. Except the good ones. Think im seeing a pattern here.
There surely is a difference between going for the mask in the first place or experiencing a mask feeling as a result of something else. In my opinion, he describes the latter.
This is so true. I wouldn't like to go as far as saying most of them are rubbish, but they are definitely out of context. I don't think anyone should take them as a serious point of reference.
@@mikeziemann I don't think the point of the video is to treat these quotes as technical advice to be adopted by the student. The point is that every great singer approached their technique with a different mentality (even if what they did in practice may have been physiologically quite similar). The fallacy is to pick and chose quotes (many of which are repeated out of context, or, more importantly, loosely translated) and formulate an entire technical approach around them. And, as some people in this comment section have pointed out, many of these singers weren't very consistent in how they described things.
_"By the end you'll see, that there's nothing that is valid for everyone."_ With the caveat that just because someone can sing, doesn't mean they understand how ther body works. You can't take them all literally. Like Stader: "breathe with the _back half_ of my lungs", which requires _magic_ to work ;) No short of "The Force", Luke. I'm sure it _feels_ like that, to her. People find the contradictions funny, but some of them may as well be an artifact of people not expressing themselves properly. People can't even agree on what "head voice" means, or any terminology. Especially when people use imaginary terms to describe their feelings - those are _not_ actually _technical_ descriptions. When two people talk about what they think their attempts at "in the mask" were, they need not necessarily actually be talking about the same thing. There is no precise assessment of anything here, just throwing around of vague concepts and feelings they or their teacher picked up somewhere, thought they understood, and henceforth used in their particular (mis)understanding. E.g. take Ponselle: She wants to be dark to make sure the throat is open. What does dark mean here? (my guess: low larynx in a non-squeezy way) And is it actually a contradiction to those wanting to notice brightness? What is the reference in each, their prior experience from which they then corrected their tone to the other? Going less "dark" than Giacomini or Kaufmann would likely be desirable. Going more dark than Florez may be desirable. And both those corrections may actually lead to the same point. Is that a contradiction? No. Just humans with vague and, implicitly, *_highly contextual_* perceptions, making imprecise / incomplete statements, often without being aware of that. Similar would be "slender tone" vs. thick, with the same examples So my hipshot claim is: there isn't as much contradiction in there than it may superficially appear. Most especially among singers who seem to claim the opposite but whom you can hear doing roughly the same thing. Then Gigli saying "every student needs his own method" - for that to make sense, it would require a definition of "method" that excludes dynamic adaptation to the current needs of a student, and is some sort of carved-in-stone sequence of things a teacher of such a "method" has his student do, no matter where they are. But if a "method" has a realistic (for purpose) model of physiology _and_ means to detect deviations from optimal setup, as well as concepts of what excercises will develop things closer towards the optimum - from wherever a student is situated, then Gigli's statement is false (for such a method). Seems to me, any "method" that can't offer that would seem to not be actually teaching at all. It's about as much teaching as slapping some recordings in front of someone, saying: "do these. see you in a year". As for "nothing that is valid for everyone.", - you don't exactly mean that anyway. You would not seriously suggest that raising the larynx, pulling the cords apart, doing weird whole body contortions or moving the head in extreme directions, ... , would be likely to be helpful for becoming a great opera singer for anyone. Then you might say: "come on, _those_ things are _obvious,_ you exaggerate". Do I? Maybe not. Maybe some things are just less commonly understood. & thus seem more up for grabs. - That Chaliapin quote about learning an opera is quite interesting. Who has that time, though :D
Exactly! Stader FELT as if she was breathing with the back half of her lungs, and that mental image worked for her; Nilsson FELT as if she was singing in whatever she imagined the mask to be, and that worked for her. All humans are different and have slightly differently wired internal sensory nerves, so every singer must find whatever mental image they need to adjust their vocal organs for optimal singing.
![[Reality Check] Grigolo vs. Tetelman](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TZS7IbIbmgE/mqdefault.jpg)
![[Reality Check] Joseph Calleja](/img/n.gif)
I love the fact that basically everyone said the contrary of each others
Given that singing is the art of subjective muscular sensation, combined with the fact that the greatest singers seldom are the greatest teachers, it’s not strange that singers seem to contradict each other when describing their technique.
Sometimes I think they are describing the same thing, but subjectively they feel different.
@@ey8767 exactly ☺️
It’s like fitness. Whatever works for you, is the answer
I love it; it genuinely reminds me of absolutely stacked gym bros who clearly don't actually know the first thing about exercise science and contradict each other left and right. Delicious.
Battistini: "I never breathe in more air than I need to smell a rose."
Also Battistini: sings half of the aria in full voice and on one breath
They must've got some pretty big roses in Contigliano
That quote by Jean de Rezke at 1:32 is something Juan Diego Florez took literally. Sadly
Galli-Curci said about singing (among other advice): "I think that everybody of us has a way to sing that is quite personal."
Lol... This shows how difficult it is to teach and learn good singing: even the greatest had no clue of how they did that... 😆
At least Ruffo was honest. He would not teach something he himself did not know how to do.
Spectacular.
What a stupendous montage!! Thank you for all the hard work it must have taken to compile it ❣️❣️
Such a gorgeous plethora of fantastical thought with no inexorable relation with scientific reality. Singers are singularly peculiar creatures, in this case reminiscent in their ways of explaining the craft to old grannies explaining the thought process behind the methods used when cooking their signature dishes: "Brown the roast before braising, so it won't loose it's juices"; "Add a pinch of ash to your caramel so it remains creamy"; "always put the bay leaf before the salt". The rationale may be flawed, but the food and the singing both happen to be exquisite. That is, in my humblest of opinions, part of the beauty of this grand mistery that is Opera.
Magda Olivero kept her voice incredibly healthy her entire life so that's a good reference!
Varied quotes and opinions from those singers indeed.
"Make it blossom like a tree in Spring" said a teacher of a friend of mine. My friend asked "what kind of tree?" The teacher responded impatiently "I don't know. Just pick one!"🤣
OMG I love this video. It's brilliant. Thank you!!!!
One of the best videos on TH-cam!
Wow, wonderful video! "When a note is perfect, it should lie and vibrate like a metal ball on top of the jet of water in a fountain."That was - according to Jussi Björling - what his very musically gifted dad (who himself was an opera singer) taught his 3 sons. It is really interesting that so many different views are presented. Birgit Nilsson and Jussi Björling had the same voice teacher, the famous tenor Joseph Hislop. Jussi thought that Hislop helped him much, while Birgit thought he was awful and almost ruined her voice,
Delicious contradictions...very funny. Thank you very much. ❤
wow almost hard to believe Gigli smoked that much
There is no ONE technique that works for everyone. For me, I take bits and pieces of tech advice. If it works for me, I keep it, if not, I don't use it.
😂😂😂!!! Part 2, please !!!
The position of the sensation of a correctly produced note depends on the vowel and pitch; this position is an effect and is not caused by trying to squirt the voice anywhere. On low notes with certain vowels there is a slight forward feel, but this moves further back with ascent in pitch. High notes have a feeling of height and back. All this is basically "Old School" teaching as is careful vowel modification.
@@ian1856 I disagree. The natural voice modifies the vowel subconsciously, but natural technique is usually beaten out of singers by modern conservatoire teaching. The non-natural singer has to learn to progressively colour a vowel with ascent in pitch besides letting the lips move into the "Ah" position. For examples, the vowel "A" is gradually tinted or tinged with "O" though the middle register (with gradual relaxing of the lips) and given a touch of "U" on high notes. This way means there is no passaggio which bedevils so many modern singers.
6:54 if we take Carreras word for true, looking at his performances from the mid 1980s on, he wasn't getting much sex. Either that, or he claimed this before he went through leukaemia, and it really strained his voice and no matter how much sex he got, he couldn't sing as well as he did before.
It’s a shame to see what he let the industry do to him. It’s very hard to find a better Duke or Edgardo than young Carreras. Unfortunately, he will mainly be remembered for his performances of Cavaradossi, don Jose and Radames that he shouted his way through
Maybe he wasn't having enough sex because he had leukaemia? OK I am kidding... His decline began way before he had leukaemia. He is a good lyric tenor with a soothing voice. I find his renditions of Nemorino, Duke of Mantua, Alfredo, etc are very impressive. But he was singing dramatic repertoires, which ruined his voice. The illness certainly didn't help. He basically didn't sing many staged operas after his recovery and focused on art songs.
Carreras..too funny!
The problem with great singers is that they approach teaching from their own perspective. They often think and focus on problems or areas where they experienced difficulties. Of course every singer has their own difficulties that they need to overcome. It could also lead to some other problems the teacher might think a singer is more advanced than they really are, if they can easily overcome something the teacher really struggled with, but of course it might just mean that the student has difficulties in another area. The student might be advanced through the process too quickly. A great vocal coach should be able to deal with any potential problem that might arrive. But the best bet as a student is probably to try and find a teacher that had similar issues to your own.
You see a wide range of different views on technique in the books Divas and Tenor.
A wise student of singing should decide for himself what is important as far as having his own voice obey him and the requirements of the music. The music dictates what must be achieved. How you arrive at that takes a lot of soul searching, trial and error and the input of singers who you believe achieved their goals. There are certain qualities of a great voice that are universal. What are they? Beauty, power, vocal range, staying power, and a sense of emotional connection to the text. We have to understand that EVERY NOTE we sing is the result of our creating our physical instrument and sustaining it from note to note...phrase to phrase. Our vocal instrument is human...physical...and able to change in an instant from a glorious thrilling instrument to our everyday ordinary speaking voice. We must be able to consciously identify what is necessary to maintain our instrument in its instrumental posture so that our voice flows out in a beautiful consistent manner. That is the challenge.
Well said and very true!
It comes back to the issue that you can't see what your muscles are actually doing while singing, so yo resort to describing the sensations and that's not always accurate to what is actually happening physically.
I was wondering what your opinion is on baritone Yuriy Yurchuk, I quite like him. What do you think of him?
I never heard him live. Not sure what to think of his stunt as the "Ukrainian Batman", but he sure has a quality voice. A very nice, unique color and, apparently, quite resonant.
@@AfroPoli yeah i was think the same thing about that britains got talent thing, probably just having fun. Im looking forward to hearing him live one day
Franco later spoke against mask singing
He said it’s a consequence of the right actions and not a goal to aim for
@@pipogalli in an interview with Stephan Sucker he says verbatiam "la voce non va in maschera", the voice doesnt go into the mask as it closes the throat. I mean from a scientific point the throat cannot be closed or open, or put in the mask. But i think mask singing is specially misleading as it is just overbrightening with no real projection.
@@armandosanchez4978i know that i just interpreted this quote. It happens as a consequence of a free voice and a free throat…
So: keep the tone forward in the mask but also back . Sing brightly but also dark. Release the muscles , but never release the muscles. You must have powerful lungs, but you only need a small amount of air. Placement and vocalises are worthless. Except the good ones. Think im seeing a pattern here.
You should've replaced Carrera's quote by Pearce's "infamous" one!
What was that? That you sing better without sex?
Name music?? 😅😢❤
Melodies from Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Old gramophone recordings.
1:50 Franco Corelli also said many times on records that singing in the mask is bad, so…?
There surely is a difference between going for the mask in the first place or experiencing a mask feeling as a result of something else. In my opinion, he describes the latter.
It was taken out of context
quotes about great singing and Carreras says ... 😂😂😂
Most of these quotes will lead to confusion and not to progress.
This is so true. I wouldn't like to go as far as saying most of them are rubbish, but they are definitely out of context. I don't think anyone should take them as a serious point of reference.
@@mikeziemann I don't think the point of the video is to treat these quotes as technical advice to be adopted by the student. The point is that every great singer approached their technique with a different mentality (even if what they did in practice may have been physiologically quite similar). The fallacy is to pick and chose quotes (many of which are repeated out of context, or, more importantly, loosely translated) and formulate an entire technical approach around them. And, as some people in this comment section have pointed out, many of these singers weren't very consistent in how they described things.
_"By the end you'll see, that there's nothing that is valid for everyone."_
With the caveat that just because someone can sing, doesn't mean they understand how ther body works.
You can't take them all literally.
Like Stader: "breathe with the _back half_ of my lungs", which requires _magic_ to work ;) No short of "The Force", Luke. I'm sure it _feels_ like that, to her.
People find the contradictions funny, but some of them may as well be an artifact of people not expressing themselves properly.
People can't even agree on what "head voice" means, or any terminology.
Especially when people use imaginary terms to describe their feelings - those are _not_ actually _technical_ descriptions.
When two people talk about what they think their attempts at "in the mask" were, they need not necessarily actually be talking about the same thing. There is no precise assessment of anything here, just throwing around of vague concepts and feelings they or their teacher picked up somewhere, thought they understood, and henceforth used in their particular (mis)understanding.
E.g. take Ponselle: She wants to be dark to make sure the throat is open.
What does dark mean here? (my guess: low larynx in a non-squeezy way)
And is it actually a contradiction to those wanting to notice brightness?
What is the reference in each, their prior experience from which they then corrected their tone to the other?
Going less "dark" than Giacomini or Kaufmann would likely be desirable.
Going more dark than Florez may be desirable.
And both those corrections may actually lead to the same point.
Is that a contradiction? No. Just humans with vague and, implicitly, *_highly contextual_* perceptions, making imprecise / incomplete statements, often without being aware of that.
Similar would be "slender tone" vs. thick, with the same examples
So my hipshot claim is: there isn't as much contradiction in there than it may superficially appear.
Most especially among singers who seem to claim the opposite but whom you can hear doing roughly the same thing.
Then Gigli saying "every student needs his own method" - for that to make sense, it would require a definition of "method" that excludes dynamic adaptation to the current needs of a student, and is some sort of carved-in-stone sequence of things a teacher of such a "method" has his student do, no matter where they are.
But if a "method" has a realistic (for purpose) model of physiology _and_ means to detect deviations from optimal setup, as well as concepts of what excercises will develop things closer towards the optimum - from wherever a student is situated, then Gigli's statement is false (for such a method).
Seems to me, any "method" that can't offer that would seem to not be actually teaching at all. It's about as much teaching as slapping some recordings in front of someone, saying: "do these. see you in a year".
As for "nothing that is valid for everyone.", - you don't exactly mean that anyway.
You would not seriously suggest that raising the larynx, pulling the cords apart, doing weird whole body contortions or moving the head in extreme directions, ... , would be likely to be helpful for becoming a great opera singer for anyone.
Then you might say: "come on, _those_ things are _obvious,_ you exaggerate". Do I? Maybe not. Maybe some things are just less commonly understood. & thus seem more up for grabs.
-
That Chaliapin quote about learning an opera is quite interesting. Who has that time, though :D
Exactly! Stader FELT as if she was breathing with the back half of her lungs, and that mental image worked for her; Nilsson FELT as if she was singing in whatever she imagined the mask to be, and that worked for her.
All humans are different and have slightly differently wired internal sensory nerves, so every singer must find whatever mental image they need to adjust their vocal organs for optimal singing.
I'm thinking you are interesting at a party.... 😂